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Keeping the Peace
This is part of A Time of Eclipse from the Core Book. Each habitat is responsible for dealing with its internal affairs. As a result, standards of justice vary widely from the oppressive police state of the Jovian Junta to the free market judicial courts of the Extropians in the belt to the community justice policies of the anarchists out beyond Saturn. Travelers are strongly encouraged to check up on the legalities and policies of stations they are visiting so as to avoid unfortunate incidents, though muses are generally quite good about maintaining awareness of local conditions so that they can warn their users before straying into gray or illegal territory. In the inner system, standards of justice and law enforcement tend to be uniform and very familiar to the majority of the population that lived on Earth prior to the Fall, where most nations had relatively similar arrangements. Across the entire solar system, similar policies can be found. Though local laws may differ, there is widespread respect for the idea that punishments for religious or ideologically based laws only apply to residents. Visitors who violate such restrictions or other minor laws are simply deported to their home and forbidden to return. Standards of evidence for criminal investigations are also common. Modern forensic technology makes collecting and analyzing DNA and other trace evidence an exceptionally swift and easy process. Likewise, with almost all habitats having what amounts to total surveillance of all public places, any potential offenses committed there can be carefully analyzed. Standards of privacy vary widely from one habitat to another, so during emergencies or crime investigations, law enforcement officials may or may not have total access to detailed recordings of the events in any portion of the habitat including data from sensors in private dwellings. In some stations, law enforcement officials can compel everyone who might have been present during an alleged crime to provide downloads of their sensory experiences from the time of the crime. While individuals can edit their memories, discrepancies between various people’s sensory recordings are just another form of evidence. Requiring sensory downloads from witnesses and suspects is common practice in habitats controlled by the Planetary Consortium, the Jovian Republic, and most hypercorps. However, in most habitats in the outer system, law enforcement officials have no access to such records and can only compel sensory recordings from people who have been charged with serious crimes. The power of modern forensics is such that a sufficiently careful examination of people and places can often determine the nature of a crime and the perpetrator(s) with relative ease. Decisions of innocence or guilt rarely rely upon suppositions, circumstantial evidence, eyewitness testimony or any of the other notoriously unreliable forms of evidence common in past centuries. The best way for someone to avoid being convicted of a crime is to either prevent anyone from learning about the crime or to make certain that no one suspects them as the perpetrator. Once someone guilty of a crime becomes a suspect, there is a very significant chance that law enforcement officers will be able to uncover reliable evidence connecting them to the crime. However, if there is no obvious evidence connecting a specific suspect to a crime, the criminal has a greater chance of escaping discovery. Law Enforcement Law enforcement in the solar system consists of a vast patchwork of separate jurisdictions, occasionally united by various treaties. Most habitats have signed the Treaty of Uniform Security that requires either extradition or on-site trial of criminals who are accused of especially serious crimes such as attempted habitat destruction, use of incapacitating infoware (including basilisk hack attacks), or any attempt to aid the agents of the TITANs in taking over or destroying a habitat. Only the Jovian Junta and a few especially antisocial or anarchic habitats have not signed this treaty, but many habitats in the outer system maintain the right to try offenders accused by other habitats rather than extraditing them. Most habitats also require a significant amount of evidence before they are willing to extradite one of their residents. Outside the Treaty of Uniform Security, there is nothing remotely resembling a uniform code of justice and no widely recognized police force. Instead, each habitat or cluster maintains their own legal code and cadre of law enforcement officers. In most areas, law enforcement is a respected and honorable profession paid for by the government, but in a few, the only options are private security agencies that only protect individuals who subscribe to their services. Among the anarchists and scum, residents are largely responsible for their own protection, which means they may be constantly armed when in public (depending on local conditions). Depending on the stations, the most someone who is the victim of a crime can do may be to go after their attacker or post a bounty. In others, mechanisms exist for community or collective problem-solving that often involve assembling an ad-hoc grouping of peers to assess the situation, offer non-biased judgment, and sometimes pursue collective action. The only widely accepted law enforcement officers that attempt to maintain jurisdiction across the solar system are bonded investigators and security consultants from companies such as Medusan Shield or Direct Action. Both organizations have contracts with various hypercorps and inner system stations to provide security. However, in the outer system and in other regions not controlled (directly or indirectly) by the hypercorps, the status of these officers is far more tenuous. In habitats that do not have security contracts with their organization, the best these agents can do is act as bounty hunters. Due to extensive stories of excesses in the inner system, many colonies frown on freelance bounty hunters — often referred to as ego hunters — and may ban them entirely. Others allow agents from licensed security hypercorps to act as ego hunters, but forbid them from extraditing or otherwise restraining or punishing the criminals they are pursuing. Instead, agents are required to turn over evidence so that the habitat’s own judicial system may hold a trial, in which case a convicted person may be remanded to the agent’s custody. Law enforcement officers experience similar difficulties attempting to apprehend a suspect who has fled to another habitat. Closely allied habitats in the outer system usually allow full or at least limited legal powers to visiting law enforcement officers from their allies. There are also various small private security organizations that work closely with local law enforcement offices to provide inter-habitat security between colonies that are not closely allied. The members of these organizations attempt to maintain sufficiently high rep to earn the respect of all the habitats with which they work. They act as both bounty hunters and unbiased investigators in situations that can sometimes involve multiple legal systems. Most of these security companies are located in the outer system and their jurisdiction tends to be limited to a single region, like the middle belt or the Saturn system. Organizations that attempt to grow larger usually come into direct competition with larger hypercorps such as Medusan Shield and Direct Action and are subsequently either bought out or undercut and discredited. Bounty hunters and private investigators are also available on many autonomist habitats, some of whom are highly reliable. Others are known for their extreme moral and ethical flexibility, especially if the pay is sufficiently high. On some stations and scum ships, these private contractors can be hired to simply go on board and abduct or execute a resident as long as this person has a low enough rep. Attempting to abduct or kill a respected member of the community, however, rapidly earns the ire of the entire 60 habitat. The various small-scale or private security organizations from the outer system can sometimes pursue subjects to habitats controlled by the various hypercorps or the Planetary Consortium. Doing so requires background checks, security screenings, and often moderately large payments. Punishment Among the autonomist colonies, forced exile or repaying the victim with an equitable amount of goods or labor are the principle punishments for all but the most heinous crimes (those being attempted mass murder, habitat destruction, attempting to create seed AIs or similarly extreme actions). In the collectivist anarchist habitats, antisocial behavior typically involves expulsion or reputation penalties, though solutions that involve making amends and rehabilitation are often pursued over standard punishments. At the other end of the spectrum, people convicted of more serious crimes in the most violent and lawless habitats are executed and all of their known backups destroyed. In many others, exceedingly serious crimes are usually dealt with by giving the criminal a choice of forced uploading into a humanely outfitted but isolated computer prison or mandatory personality modification—assuming that someone has not simply killed the criminal before they were brought to justice (such killings are generally treated as matters of self-defense). Mandatory personality modifications are generally limited to the absolute minimum necessary to prevent the individual from repeating similar crimes. At the other extreme, punishments in hypercorp controlled habitats and settlements controlled by the Planetary Consortium range from fines paid in either money or labor to periods of involuntary indentured servitude ranging from several months to many years. Violent crimes, especially ones threatening either important hypercorp employees or the habitat as a whole, also result in mandatory personality modification. Such modifications often include the creation of a strong sense of loyalty and obedience to the hypercorp. Punishments are even more draconic in the Jovian Republic, where permanent execution and the destruction of all backups is the most common punishment for serious crimes against the leaders or large groups of the populace. Since the rulers of the Republic are strong bioconservatives, personality editing and forced uploading are rarely used. Forced indenture is very common, however, as are more standard forms of imprisonment. The Republic is one of the last places in the solar system that has physical prisons. The vast majority of other habitats fall somewhere between these extremes. Punishments for non-violent crimes consist of enforced repayment, where the offender must work off a debt to their victim(s) or face more serious punishments. Instead of enforced indenture, offenders usually must only work between five and twenty hours a week for their victims and only need to do so until the crime has been suitably repaid. The typical repayment is between two and three times the value of the good or service taken from the victim. Category:Setting Category:Core Book